Marie Feodorowna had no clue,I think,or choose not to have one.Her own marriage with Paul,well,anything else must
have been heaven to the poor woman,and besides,I think all and each was well aware that letters & other documents
would end up in archives for all to read later,another reason not to be too open officially.But Marie must have known.
Especially after the robbery of Anna's jewelry and her subsequent refusal of seeing her Guillaume for a while,she had heard
the "rumours" too.Lets say " she had to give them a place"...before she was on speaking terms with her husband again.
At that time,Anna made requests for new jewelry and precious stones.Peanuts for her family as they didn't know where
with it so Anna did receive another impressive collection from mama and her brother,the Tsar.
Unhappy,in a way yes,it certainly would be called a dysfunctional family these days.CP and later King Willem II had his
ins- and outs.One was the conflict with his father,King Willem I,on the running of the country and him being unhappy
for the keeping at arms lenght by his father from state affairs.He was a coniving man,making deal with the King of France
of separating the Wallone part of Belgium,treason,a slap in the face of his father Willem I,again.Willem I didn't see his heir
fit to rule and preserve what Willem I had so carefully build up after the french occupation was ended and the Orange-Nassau's
were requested to return to The Netherlands.Willem I was right on Willem II,he didn't particularly do all that much,but
the debts kept building up....
Later he,Willem II,got his revenge if one can call it that,as his father decided to marry a catholic former Lady in Waiting to his
first wife Mimi,néé Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia.A belgian Countess and catholic,while the Northern and the Southern Netherlands
just had ended the conflict (and the most silly revolution there ever has been I hurry to add...).Willem I was forced,saw no other
way then to Abdicate in 1840 and moving to Berlin with his Henriette.From that moment on the son and Anna found eachother in
totally rejecting the idea of his fathers marriage and the subsequent ignoring of the father and his new bride.Anna was perfect
at that,never forgetting she was a born Grand Duchess of Russia who married one of the heroes of Waterloo,she held her pretty
little nose up and pretended no-one else was there except her,an egocentric woman.Another problem in the marriage was the
gambling,or making incredible debts anyway,and the manouvering into blackmail positions.
The latter lead to the believe that the robbery of most if not all of Anna Pavlovna's jewelry from their Palace in Brussels,
was something of a scheme by Willem to pay his debts or the blackmailer(s).Willem was said to be bi-sexual,I said:
said,I never bedded him so it's only hear say allthough persistent I must admit.
Anna comforted herself with her russian chapel,her russian choir and the immens chainsmoking Russian woman who was
her "personal assistant",while Willem had his way with his fling for anything gothic,designing and building new edifices
in that style.When he died in his own design neo-gothic Palace in Tilburg,Anna was at Soestdijk and travelled to Tilburg
immediatly.She was,and always had been,besotted with her "Guillaume" ,and had a room dedicated to him at Soestdijk that
is unchanged till today.
At his death in 1849,the debts were such,especially those to his brother in law Tsar Nicolas I,that Anna saw no other
way out as to give most of the Dutch Masters from the private collection,including many Rembrandt's,to Nicolas which is
how and why the Hermitage St.Petersburg has that many of them.Thanks to a Prince with a hole in his hand....
The son and Heir,the future Willem III had no contact with his father and only very rarely with his mother,a disfunctional kid.
He was downright angry at his father for signing the Constitution of 1848 which abolished Absolute Monarchy and
the start of the Constitutional Monarchy we know here since.He was in England when Willem II died,and,refused to return home
and take up his task as a Monarch.It took days and a lot of words I won't repeat here,before he finally decided to return.
The son had always been a problem child,yes.His marriage with Sophie was a disaster,their son Maurits's dead meant an even wider
gap between Willem III and Sophie,who,I must say,wasn't the easyest kid on the block either.Far superior to her husband in
the intellectual field,she wasn't intellectual enough to stand above that and to guide him with a gentle hand.Not that that would
have made that much of a difference,Willem III was a difficult man,misunderstood maybe we would say today.Conflicts with his
sons,perticularly his Heir Willem,Wiwill in the family,who moved to Paris out of protest as his father forbid him to marry the woman
he loved,a second son who died of TBC at Madeira,and then finally,only his youngest son was left,Alexander with whom he hardly
had any contact at all.Alexander became Heir after Wiwill died in Paris,a position this lonely looner didn't want.He was totally
besotted with his mother Queen Sophie,and was lost when she died.He lived alone in his little Palace in The Hague,and he lived there
at the time of the marriage of the King to Emma.As a sign of disapproval he closed the windowshutters all day.His half-sister Wilhelmina
was born the next year and the year after that he himself died.Wilhelmina had never actually known her three half-brothers,yet she
would speak affectionately about;" the four of us" in her later life.Difficult to judge all the family now really,you have to see it all in the day
and age,the time but you don't have to envy a Royal for being Royal at any time,even tho times have changed.
Anna's daughter Sophie was the apple in mommy's eye and was married off to the Grand Duke of Saxen-Weimar.
In her later years she was a immense support her sister in law,the Queen Regent Emma and to her niece,
the Princess Wilhelmina and it was a blow to both to loose the Lady that gave such valuable advice to two young
and unexperienced Ladies.They would catch-up on that later..
But back to Anna.When she died all was according to the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church,meaning the next of kin were
to mourn next to an open coffin.Here comes d-i-l Queen Sophie,true or highly exaggerated but she claims;" the stence was such
she didn't know where to turn" .....Even in death,there was the constant bickering between unhappy people.
